So, you invite David Cameron's mucker Jeremy Clarkson to plug his latest DVD and the Top Gear Christmas special on The One Show on the day of the biggest public sector strike for many a long year. He's appearing live on BBC1 just after 7pm – primetime viewing for families with kids. An audience of 4.8 million. What could possibly go wrong? After all, it's not as if he's got previous ...

BBC says sorry to Mexico for Top Gear insults

In the episode, broadcast on 30 January 2011, Hammond joked that Mexican cars reflected national characteristics, saying they were "just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".

May described Mexican food as "like sick with cheese on it" and Clarkson predicted they would not get any complaints about the show because "at the Mexican embassy, the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control like this (snores). They won't complain, it's fine".

Top Gear on the offensive again – now it's Albania's turn

"Apparently, what happens is Albanians go to England, get a job, buy a car and then bring it back with them," Clarkson said in a segment of Top Gear in which he and co-presenters May and Richard Hammond had gone to the east European country ostensibly to road-test cars for a mafia boss.

Jeremy Clarkson: TV obsessed with hiring "black Muslim lesbians"

Clarkson tells Top Gear magazine that TV bosses are obsessed with having "black Muslim lesbians" on shows to balance out the numbers of white heterosexual men. "The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blond-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian. Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works. But here we have Top Gear setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them."

Top Gear's studio audience consists of "oafs", says Clarkson

"We get 500 people coming to the show each week and most of them are oafs," he said. "Who would you rather have in our shots?"

But he said it would be a "disaster" to have a female presenter on the show. "I think a girl would be a disaster, seeing the chemistry we have now," he said. "You bring a girl in and you start taking the piss out of her, that would look like bullying.

"I remember when we were doing the original screen tests [for other presenters] and BBC people were insisting we had to hire a girl after we had selected [Richard] Hammond, so we just got James May."

A rare personal apology after Clarkson compared Brown to Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd during a tour of the country.

"It's the first time I've ever seen a world leader [Rudd] admit we really are in deep shit," Clarkson was reported as saying, of a speech by the then Australian PM about the depth of global financial crisis in 2009.

"He genuinely looked terrified. Poor man, he's actually seen the books. We have this one-eyed Scottish idiot who keeps telling us everything's fine and he's saved the world and we know he's lying, but he's smooth at telling us."

No fine for Top Gear after Jeremy Clarkson's lorry driver joke

Ofcom clears Top Gear of breaching its broadcasting code after Clarkson, while driving a lorry, said to the other presenters: "What matters to lorry drivers? Murdering prostitutes? Fuel economy?"

A few minutes later Clarkson added: "This is a hard job [driving a lorry] and I'm not just saying this to win favour with lorry drivers: change gear; change gear; change gear; check your mirrors; murder a prostitute … "

The regulator said the comments were justified by the context in which they were made and did not breach its programming code.

Top Gear criticised for showing Clarkson drinking G&T at the wheel

BBC2 show told off by the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee for showing Clarkson and May drinking while driving during a Polar special.